Sunrise at Butterfly Cove

by Sarah Bennett

  She’d only ever seen the superficial veneer of Brian and Trisha’s life together. The brave face that all couples show to the world. Married life was hard. They’d had their ups and downs like all relationships, but they had worked together to find their common ground and built a strong foundation upon it. Cathy had never seen the tears, the silences, the misunderstandings that are a part of all family life, so she compared her small disappointments to a false idol of perfection that had no basis in reality.

  Aaron had been too young to understand at first. He only knew that Mummy was in heaven, an abstract idea that seemed to him like a special holiday place that only grown-ups got to visit. He loved Cathy because she had been so warm and comforting, holding him when the dreams were bad and letting him cry on her shoulder. Daddy let him cry too, but he tried not to do it too often in front of him as he didn’t like to make Daddy even more upset.

  He tried to be a good boy for Cathy, to clean his teeth and tidy his room. He painted her pictures and made her cards to say thank you and at first she had delighted in his efforts. That had started to change about a year after Daddy had married Cathy and Aaron had turned five.

  Slowly, but surely, Aaron started to be a bad boy, to get things wrong and make Cathy angry; although he never understood quite what it was that he did that was so bad. Cathy said he had been bad, told Daddy he had been bad, and Aaron had to try harder to be good.

  When Luke came along, Aaron had been pleased because Cathy didn’t have time to tell him off and find fault so much. She was too wrapped up in the new baby and Aaron loved Luke for lots of reasons, not least because he made Daddy smile more.

  The pattern had continued throughout his childhood, Aaron could do no right, Luke could do no wrong and Brian just loved both his boys. Luke had followed Aaron around from the moment he was first aware of him, initially with his big brown eyes and then on his belly as soon as he could crawl. Like a magnet, his first hesitant steps had been towards his big brother and Cathy had yet another reason to hate him.

  It was a testament to their father that his determination to treat both boys as equals had helped to negate the poisonous games that Cathy played. Aaron had realised by the time he was around nine that there was nothing he could do to please her, but he never stopped trying. He stayed out of her way as much as possible and focused on his dad and his baby brother.

  He was not a natural rebel. That eagerness to please had stayed with him so he diligently made Cathy Mother’s Day cards and picked pretty flowers that he thought would make her smile. The cards would be hidden on the mantelpiece behind a vase; the flowers went unwatered and soon graced the compost heap. The report cards he bought home full of praise and high marks were glanced at without comment, unless there was a chance for Cathy to point out a weakness, some small failing that she would latch on to and raise for weeks on end.

  Aaron was gifted at sports and his dad had urged him towards team games where he could make friends and shine. Rugby was a firm favourite and Dad and Luke had bounced around on many a muddy touchline, cheering him on. Luke had of course wanted to follow him, and had happily laughed down the fact that although good, he was never quite in his brother’s class.

  The escape to university had been a relief. Aaron was too old by then to sit quietly whilst Cathy twisted another one of her barbs into his psyche. Luke had started to notice and jumped to Aaron’s defence, making things worse as Cathy saw this as more evidence of wrongdoing on Aaron’s part.

  Luke had always submitted peaceably to his mother’s smothering attentions. He had been cosseted and spoiled by her from day one and yet somehow he had remained a stoic, happy child. He loved his Mum and Dad, but Aaron was his number one and he’d never let him down. Always been there to offer a steadying hand, fend off the bullies and teach Luke everything from how to tie his shoelaces to how to talk to girls.

  When Aaron went away to university, Luke had been lost for a while, not quite sure which direction to turn in now that his lodestone was absent. His father had stepped in and provided the guidance that he needed to steer a straight path and Aaron had made sure to keep in contact every day until Luke had settled down again.

  Luke had latched on to Daniel as a natural extension of his brother and had followed them to London, to the same university that they had graduated from. His frequent trips into London to visit Aaron had triggered his love of buildings and architecture. Luke had roamed the streets for hours, seeking out the old and the new: the graceful airy charms of the Georgian town houses and the concrete monstrosities of the experimental sixties and seventies. He had explored them all and loved them all for the stories that they whispered in his ear.

  Daniel stayed by the kitchen door, his attention on Aaron who was seemingly lost in the scrolling world of his internet connection, but Daniel knew better. Like a hound on point, Aaron was focused intently on the interaction between Madeline and Luke, alert for any hint of spite or unpleasantness.

  Daniel wondered if Aaron himself understood just how wary of women his upbringing had made him. There had been some mild flirtation with Mia, but only because Aaron knew that she was taken and therefore no threat to his heart. Unlike Madeline. She could bust Aaron’s shell right open and give him the kind of maternal affection the man was aching for but would never admit to wanting.

  Daniel wondered how long the scars of the past would stand against the tide of love that carried Madeline through life and he decided that Aaron didn’t stand a chance. He was glad that he had brought his friends to Butterfly Cove and was determined to drag them back as often as possible under whatever spurious excuses he could concoct. These friends of his needed a safe harbour too.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Her parents had always been good at maintaining an outward façade, their public face so different to that behind closed doors. She was sure that some of her father’s colleagues suspected that there was more than met the eye. No-one could be quite as delicate as her mother allegedly was, although they nodded sympathetically when she had to go home early because she had a dizzy spell. It was usually the quarter bottle of vodka in her purse that made her head spin, but most times she would make it through the main course before succumbing to one too many trips to the bathroom.

  Mia paused at the nurse’s station. She was outside of visiting hours but hoped for a sympathetic hearing. A bare-faced lie about having been away and rushing back as soon as she could earned her a pat on the shoulder. A kindly nurse ushered Mia into the private side ward her mother was in. She swallowed hard and braced herself before crossing the threshold. Her mother looked small in the bed, propped up stiffly with too many pillows, her plaster-encased leg raised in a sling to keep the weight off it.

  She hadn’t seen her since Jamie’s funeral when a furious Nee had shoved her into the back of the car and driven off with her after a visibly drunk Vivian had staggered into a floral display in the crematorium and knocked it over. It had just been another horror in a day of epic shocks and horrors, and Mia had been too distraught to care much. Those who had mattered on the day already knew all her family’s secrets and she didn’t have the energy to care about the opinion of those who hadn’t.

  Mia stepped closer and studied her mother, looking for the beauty beneath the swollen eyes and broken veins on her cheeks. Vivian had been a stunner in her heyday, turning all the boy’s heads, including studious, unworldly George Thorpe. He had been totally captivated by her, obsessive and relentless in his pursuit, according to one her mother’s rambling reminiscences. Vivian had only agreed to go on a date with him because he wouldn’t leave her alone and she hoped to let him down gently. He’d been so attentive and flattering that Vivian had been caught up in his image of her as this siren, this creature of myth that was drawing George to his doom.

  He had been so unlike her other boyfriends and his outlandish comparisons of her to goddesses and heroines of the past had fed her ego to bursting. Her parents had encouraged the match, glad that their daughter had
found a serious, worthy man and not some rake who would fleece her considerable inheritance.

  Before she knew it, Vivian was married to George, pregnant and living in a small house that was attached to his junior teaching position at the university. No servants, no parties or holidays while he was busy climbing the academic career ladder. Worse still, not having had a lot of money growing up, George had fastened his grip firmly on her money and tied it up in investments and savings bonds.

  Vivian’s new allowance barely cover her regular hair appointments—never mind the shopping sprees she’d been used to. George didn’t understand why she needed so many clothes. Who was she dressing up for? Who was she trying to impress? Terrified that Vivian would be lost to him, he desperately tried to change all the things about her that had attracted him in the first place.

  Vivian wasn’t a scholar; she was a beauty. It was all she was, all she knew how to be from a young girl when she had been dressed up and primped and presented to her parents’ friends like a perfect little doll. She didn’t possess much of a personality or wit; no-one had ever had any expectations of her other than as a decoration and Vivian didn’t know how to do anything other than be pretty and spend her time doing all the things that went into making her pretty.

  The more paranoid George became, the more distant he grew, and Vivian had no defence against it, having only ever been cossetted and spoilt. She sought solace in her evening cocktails, which soon became lunchtime martinis and then bucks fizz or vodka and orange with breakfast.

  She had never bonded with Mia. Suffering from a mild case of the baby blues and not used to being the responsible party in any situation, she had been totally out of her depth. She had never wanted to be bothered with the baby and could only lament at the changes to her body. The other two girls had followed; Kiki less than a year later had been a complete accident—something Vivian made a point of repeating over the years. Nee had followed some three years after. At that point, Vivian had moved to her own room and refused to let George near her again.

  She had been a distant figure throughout their childhoods. A succession of housekeepers had kept them clothed and fed and settled into a routine, but there was no-one to kiss a scraped knee or check their homework or soothe them after a bad dream. Vivian had spent more and more time in her room and George had spent more and more time at work. His distance from his wife extending to his girls as he sought solace in his studies. His reputation grew until he had become one of the foremost scholars of ancient Greece in the country.

  ‘Hello, Vivian,’ Mia said quietly and her mother blinked and tried to focus on the intruder in her room.

  ‘Who’s that? Alice, is that you?’ Mia moved closer and leaned in so her mother could see it was her daughter and not her own sister.

  ‘No, it’s Mia; how are you, Mother?’ She rarely called her by that title, her mother preferring Vivian as they grew up. She hadn’t wanted her own age to be judged by that of her children.

  ‘Oh, Mia, where have you been? Where’s that lovely husband of yours?’

  Mia glanced upwards and supressed a shiver. It seemed like Vivian had finally drowned her memory in the bottom of a glass. ‘Jamie’s dead. He died more than two years ago in a car accident, remember?’ The words came out harsher than she intended, and she softened slightly at the confusion on Vivian’s face.

  She perched on the edge of the bed and took her mother’s hand. ‘How are you feeling, Vivian? What happened to your leg? Did you take a tumble?’ Her mother started to thrash on her pillow and Mia leaned closer and pressed a hand to her shoulder, trying to still the restless movement.

  She watched helplessly as Vivian’s face crumpled and tears spilled over her cheeks. ‘He pushed me; Georgie hates me so, he pushed me, he pushed me,’ she muttered and Mia reared back in shock.

  A nurse bustled in at that moment without even a knock on the door frame. She strode over to the bed and fiddled with the drip that was plugged into the back of Vivian’s hand. ‘Pay her no mind, now. Your poor father, it breaks his heart when she comes out with such things. She doesn’t know what she is saying half the time, sees people from the past he reckons. People she hasn’t seen since she was a girl. She calls me Katherine; your father says she was her best friend, but they haven’t seen each other in years. Try not to let it upset you. The doctor says it might just be the shock of the fall.’

  Mia tried to gather her wits about her as the nurse rambled on. Was it true what the nurse was saying—that her mother was just talking nonsense? Or had her father somehow been the cause of her accident? It wouldn’t be the first time Vivian had taken a tumble due to the amount of alcohol in her veins and her father had never raised his hand to his wife. Not that she’d even seen. She watched as the nurse fiddled with the gauge feeding the drip on her mother’s hand and Vivian soon began to calm. Her lashes fluttered close across the paper-thin skin of her face and her grip on Mia’s hand slackened.

  Mia rose and gathered her bag and jacket, desperate to be out of the blank impersonal room and away from the smell of antiseptic and illness. She briefly considered kissing Vivian’s cheek, but only because she knew the nurse would expect a show of daughterly affection.

  Mia was past pretending that all was sweetness and light in the Thorpe family. It was time to stop caring so much about the judgements of strangers. She thanked the nurse for making Vivian comfortable and took her leave. It was time to face the second unpleasant visit on her schedule.

  Mia dropped her head wearily onto the kitchen table and knocked it against the wood a few times in frustration. It had been a horrendous day and she knew it wasn’t over yet. Bill placed his hand on the top of her head for a moment before he carried on past and flicked the switch on the kettle. He was of the old-school opinion that there wasn’t much that couldn’t be improved with a nice cup of tea.

  Pat was upstairs trying to settle Matty and Charlie into the same spare room they had stayed in whenever they had been at Bill and Pat’s before. Matty was very quiet and Mia knew that she would need to try and have a talk with him sooner rather than later. The poor boy had barely spoken since Mia had arrived to find Kiki in floods of tears because she had managed to burn the meal she was cooking and because she’d had almost no sleep for forty-eight hours because the kids had been so sick. They were still under her feet having only just recovered from the stomach bug they’d been suffering from.

  Charlie had latched on to Mia like a limpet, only releasing her grip long enough to be put into the back of Mia’s hire car. Matty had not protested when Mia told him to go and put a few clothes together and find his and Charlie’s toothbrushes.

  Mia had managed to get Kiki to stop crying long enough to comprehend that she was taking the kids for a couple of days. She’d told Kiki to find the menu so that Mia could order a takeaway for supper in the hopes that Neil would be partially assuaged by the fact that there was something to eat when he got home from work.

  Kiki had mumbled a few protests about the children needing to be back at school the next day but Mia put her foot down. It was Thursday already so missing Friday wouldn’t be that big a deal and she would keep them at Bill and Pat’s until Sunday evening so that Kiki could get some sleep and get the house sorted out.

  At the reminder that it was Friday the next day, Kiki had paled in horror over the impending dinner party. Mia had agreed to go back to Kiki’s the next morning and help her with the planning. She hated Neil and couldn’t give a damn about him or the bloody party, but Kiki looked ready to break so she had grit her teeth and promised to be there.

  Mia knocked her head against the table again and knew that she didn’t have any choice in the matter. She would have to speak to her dad and take over the running of the party for him. Her phone buzzed in her pocket, causing Mia to startle and bump her head more firmly on the table. She sat up, rubbing her forehead as she fumbled her phone from her pocket.

  It was a text from Daniel and Mia suddenly longed to hear his voice. ‘I�
��m just going to make a quick call, Bill, and then I’m going to need you and Pat to help me with a council of war.’

  ‘Who’s the enemy?’ Bill grinned viciously at her, seeming pleased with the prospect of going into battle with anyone who had hurt his girl.

  ‘My brother-in-law and his fellow arselickers from the university’s history department,’ Mia said, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

  ‘No-one who matters then, lovey. No-one who matters a jot.’

  Mia laughed out loud, her burdens suddenly lighter and more manageable. Bill was right, Neil and his cronies didn’t matter. Only Kiki and the children did and she would do whatever was necessary to help them.

  ‘Mia, love, what a lovely surprise to hear from you. Are you all right?’ The reassuring rumble of Daniel’s voice was another balm to her weary heart as she made herself comfortable on the back step. It was cold out, but the late afternoon sun was warm on her face as she closed her eyes and raised her head like a flower seeking nourishment.

  ‘A difficult day, Daniel, but I don’t want to talk about it just yet. Tell me what you’ve been up to. I just want to listen to your voice for a few minutes.’

  There was a brief pause and she knew that Daniel was wrestling with himself, wanting to push her for more detail but trying to respect her request. A soft sigh of acquiescence ghosted through the phone and he proceeded to tell her about the latest events at home. His deep voice lulled her as she pictured the scenes he described.

  Her beautiful kitchen came into her mind’s eye. It was her favourite room in the house, the hub around which everything else revolved. When she was lost in her cooking, Mia felt complete. It had been down to her to take care of Kiki and Nee, to make sure that all three of them had a decent meal at least. Their father ate mostly at work and provided there was a light supper waiting for him, he didn’t care who had prepared it.